


no light, no sound, no sun

by OpheliaMarina



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/F, Misgendering, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:19:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10821717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpheliaMarina/pseuds/OpheliaMarina
Summary: It's 1984, they're all waiting for summer. Mike is almost thirteen; she doesn't know what the world is supposed to be becoming.





	no light, no sound, no sun

**Author's Note:**

> Reader's notes: in this fic, both Mike and Will are identified as trans female characters- other characters misgender them due to being unaware of their identity, but given Mike's perspective, the pronouns applied to both characters are she/her.

It’s 1984. Thriller by Michael Jackson has been playing on the radio for 25 weeks. Ronald Reagan is going to be president again. Mike’s turning thirteen in the summertime. 

“My mom used to say a name is the first gift you ever get,” Mike says to Eleven. They’re sitting criss cross applesauce on Mike’s bed, facing each other. The moon never faces Mike’s window, but light is coming through the glass in the way it always comes through Nancy’s. “Nancy was the name of my dad’s sister. My aunt, you know. She’s dead now. And Michael was my grandfather.”

El doesn’t say anything. Her hair hasn’t been getting longer. She’s wearing Nancy’s pink dress, all clean and unripped like it’s new again, and she’s listening. Her eyes are so big, and her hands are wrapped around her ankles. 

Mike swallows. “I mean, Mike is an okay nickname,” she says. “But if I had to go by Michael I’d die. It would get confusing at family stuff, and Michael’s a weird name anyway. Nancy super hates her name, she thinks it makes her sound like an old lady plus I think it freaks her out to be named after a dead person.”

Still Eleven doesn’t speak. Her eyes have gotten a little bigger, and darker. It makes Mike nervous to look at her, but it’s either that or face down the moon that’s shining through the wrong window. She says, “I guess the point is is that some gifts are just bad gifts.”

Finally, finally El blinks. One of her hands uncurls from her ankle, and turns over, extends. The dark 011 tattoo holds thin against the paleness of her skin, dark over skinny blue veins. 

After a second of hesitation, Mike lifts her own hand up, fits her hand around El’s wrist. El’s arm goes limp in her hand. Mike doesn’t look up higher than her elbow. She says, “Did I ever tell you I have another aunt named Elizabeth but she goes by Ellie? I always liked her a lot. She lives with her friend Pauline in New York. If you want we could call you Ellie, but I think El suits you better.”

There’s a movement, near El’s chin, and Mike looks up to see if she’s nodding. 

She’s not. She’s still, and caked in dirt, blood covering the entire part of her face south of her nose. Nancy’s dress is gone. The moon is gone. The lights are flashing in Mike’s room, on and off, like disco. Like something terrible. 

Mike doesn't move. She says, “El?” 

“Goodbye, Mike,” El says, and dissolves into a million tiny pieces of ash. 

Mike wakes up without screaming, but with her mouth open. No one’s there. The moon is tilted towards Nancy’s side of the house. 

All her dreams go like that. Even the part with the moon, which makes no sense. She barely even goes into Nancy’s room anymore. 

\---

“Your hair’s getting so long now, sweetheart,” Mom says at the breakfast table, over eggs that she worked so hard not to burn they’re still soupy. “If you want I can cut it after school.”

“It’s fine,” Mike says, and shoves as much bacon into her mouth as she possibly can. Next to her, Nancy wrinkles her nose in disgust, but it makes Holly laugh. 

It’s still 1984. School is letting out soon. Nancy just got her driver’s license, and Will’s starting to come to class less and less.

And Mom wants to keep acting like nothing’s changed at all. “Mike, honey,” she says, diligently. “It’s in your eyes. You’re going to look like a girl soon. Let me cut it.”

Mike can’t answer because her mouth is full of bacon.

Nancy stands up first, and grabs the keys out of the center of the table. With her other hand she knocks Mike on the back of the head. “We’re heading out,” she says. “Come on, Mike, swallow.” 

She does, hard, and follows Nancy out of the kitchen. 

The thing is with Nancy- 

The thing is with Nancy, now that they’re nice to each other more, they talk less. The silence probably has to do with other things, like death, but mostly what it is is that Mike doesn’t know how to feel sorry for her sister, and she doesn’t know how to work around that. She thinks Nancy is probably the same way.

So they’re in the car together, and quiet. Nancy holds the wheel with both hands, hard, so hard her knuckles go white and blue, always. Mike tries not to look at her too long, because she knows Nancy gets anxious about anything when she’s in a car. But her hair is getting longer too. It’s getting sort of wild near the bottom.

And Mike’s getting taller. Nancy’s staying the same. 

Out of the blue, Nancy says, “Hey. You don’t have to cut your hair.”

Mike hits her head on the top of the car, because Nancy literally never speaks when she’s driving. She’s rubbing the top of her scalp and grumbling when Nancy continues, “What if your hair got really long and I cut mine short? We could switch.”

Her fingers find the most sensitive part of her head and stay there. She looks at Nancy full on this time. “You wanna cut your hair?”

Nancy’s eyebrows are high up, and her voice is high up too, so she’s just pretending to be casual. Her bottom lip has teeth marks in it when she says, “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it.” Then, after a wobbly moment of hesitation, “All the coolest girls I’ve met have had short hair.”

She means Barb, mostly. But Mike doesn’t want to talk about that either. She looks away from Nancy, and out the window. 

They’re almost to the middle school when Nancy says, “Listen. Mike. Things aren’t going to go back to normal. Ever. Mom doesn’t get that because she doesn’t know how to do anything that isn’t normal. So, um. You don’t have to do things you don’t want to do. I’m not going to do things that I don’t want to do anymore.”

Mike feels like she’s probably lying about that, but it’s a sisterly kind of lie. A kindness. 

She says, without looking back at Nancy, “Do you think Mom will ever leave Dad?”

They both already know the answer, but Mike wants to voice the question anyway. She hadn’t really figured that Mom and Dad didn’t love each other until last year, because even though Dad sleeps on the LazyBoy and Mom wears so much perfume and they don’t talk to each other like they’re friends, Mike hadn’t known what love was supposed to be then so it was impossible to tell.

But she knows now. She wants to know if Nancy does too. 

Nancy’s quiet so long that Mike has to look at her by the time they pull into the middle school roundabout. When she checks, Nancy’s not looking at her, still, even though they’re in park. She’s just staring straight ahead, bottom lip back between her teeth.

“No, Mike,” she says. “She won’t.”

Then she looks back at Mike, gives her a critical once over, and pulls two bobby pins out of her own hair to tuck Mike’s bangs back. Her own hair falls in front of her eyes, and she just shoves it away. 

“There,” she says. “Cute. Now you can see and Mom can’t complain.”

For a split second Mike thinks Nancy’s making fun of her, and her face curls up, but then Nancy chucks her gently under the chin, and her hands are so cold, and she knows better. 

She looks at herself in the rearview mirror, and the pins are visible in her hair, but the thing is, she can actually see the pins, and not through a curtain of fringe, so it’s a plus overall. “Thanks, Nancy,” she says.

“Sure,” Nancy says. “Now get out, I need to go. See you after school.”

“Okay, jerk,” Mike says, “bye,” and hops out. Nancy waits for her to wander onto the lawn towards her friends, then drives away.

Max sighs dreamily as Mike shoves her way in between her and Will. “Your sister is sooo pretty,” she says. 

“She has a boyfriend,” Dustin says glumly, and Lucas elbows him in the gut. 

There’s a cold feeling against Mike’s temple, suddenly, and she jumps, but it’s just Will and Will’s hands, running lightly over Nancy’s bobby pins. Will’s so focused on them, eyes sharp and curious. Everyone else looks too, with Will’s hands in her hair, with the quality of the silence between them. 

Mike holds still.

Will’s hand drops. “Your hair is getting so long,” she says. 

Mike laughs as much as she can. The bell rings. 

\---

Going over to Will’s house always goes like this-

Nancy drives. She’s silent. Mike’s silent. They go up to the door together. Mike rings the bell. Jonathan answers. Jonathan and Nancy just look at each other for a weird amount of time. Then they make small talk. Mike just stands there awkwardly until Mrs. Byers comes up to the door and gives her a hug that’s usually more intense than a greeting hug should be. They all get shepherded inside. Will’s always in the bathroom and has to get called out. It takes a while. They all wait and don’t say anything. Will comes out of the bathroom green in the face. They don’t say anything about that either. Will takes Mike up to the bedroom. Nancy and Jonathan and Mrs. Byers all stay below.

And then Will always says, “Tell me about her.”

And Mike says, “No.”

They’re mapping out next week’s Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Will’s wizard needs to be resurrected, but Lucas is going to have to choose between resurrecting Will or deifying himself for the good of the team. They’re both strategically wise moves. Will’s trying to figure out a way to come back without anybody’s help.

“You’re so good at this, Mike,” she says wistfully, making the little goblin figure hop across her desk as Mike scribbles in her notebook. “You should write books, like, for real.”

“Dad thinks I would be a good engineer,” Mike says absently. She’s cross-legged on Will’s floor, sketching the Underworld, sketching Will’s wizard down there. Not helpless, not green and sick. Shining with light. All the monsters cowering at the edges.

Will’s ribs dig hard into Mike’s back when she leans over her to peer at the drawing. They’re so apparent, and sharp, and present under a thin sheet of flesh, and it almost makes Mike draw away. She says, “That looks really cool.”

“Thanks,” Mike mutters. There’s always a clammy quality to Will now, to her skin but also to the way she holds herself, the way she acts. Damp, and reticent. “I think in the underworld it makes sense for you to be more powerful. Since you got your powers through a near-death experience.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Will says, “I guess that makes sense. It’s probably like that for her, right?”

Mike shakes her head, rips the paper out of the notebook, and crumples it up. Will catches it before she chucks it in the trashcan.

“I don’t think she’s dead, Mike,” she says. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“You weren’t there,” Mike says. “You don’t know. And I don’t want to talk about it.” So she has to restart the drawing. 

Will unfolds the crumpled up one, and presses it against her wall. It’s only half shaded; some of the monsters are still half-formed and grey. 

This is how leaving Will’s house goes:

Nancy and Jonathan are sitting on the couch when they come downstairs, very close but not touching. Mrs. Byers is in the kitchen, and she gives Mike some food and a hug and a kiss on the cheek that she says is for her mom. Jonathan ruffles Mike’s hair, then Will’s. Nancy is slow to rise from the couch but quick to leave the house. She always just slightly touches the wall that’s been wallpapered over, the one that had the hole.

Will always hugs Mike goodbye now. They didn’t use to do that before, but getting stuck in an underground hellscape and nearly starving to death does that to you, Mike guesses. She hugs back so tight that she gets nervous Will will bruise.

“You can’t start giving up on stuff, Mike,” Will mutters into her shoulder. “If you’d given up on me, I’d be dead and that’s it.”

Mike doesn’t want to say _you weren’t there_ because she’s already said it, and she doesn’t want to say _sometimes dead is just dead and not vanished to a spooky alternate dimension_ because that’s sad and kind of mean. She just hugs Will tighter, then lets her go.

\---

Mike lies in the dark, and tries not to sleep. Her parents are yelling downstairs.

Dad says to Mom, “What are you doing about Michael?”

She says, “What do you mean, what am I doing about Michael? I know he’s having a rough time, I know, but the men from the government said we couldn’t-”

“I don’t mean that, I mean he’s a-” And then whispering, sharp quiet mutters Mike can’t make out.

Her pajamas are thin. It’s going to be summer in a few weeks. Soon she’ll be a year older. She sleeps with all her blankets over her, except the ones that are still in the basement, and whenever she wakes up she feels hot enough to die. 

\---

The fact is you can’t mourn someone properly if they never got to live properly. She can’t say that without it sounding like she’s blaming El for something, though, so she keeps it to herself.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was mostly an exercise in getting my writing sea legs back- it's super self indulgent, but I hope you all liked it.


End file.
